


The Starbird Corp

by Gabriel4Sam



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Amputation, Force Ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi, Force Ghost(s), Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Mace Windu Lives, Nightmares, Rebel!Boil, Rebel!Cody, Rebel!Mace, Yavin 4, prothesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 13:03:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16661601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabriel4Sam/pseuds/Gabriel4Sam
Summary: The clones, chiped, brainwashed, are prisonners of the Empire, even more than the rest of the galaxy. When Boil is rescued and become a Rebel, he learns more about the Corp dedicated to freeing his brothers, and more about the two men leading the Corp.





	The Starbird Corp

**Author's Note:**

  * For [I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning/gifts).



> I gave you a fair warning founded a wonderful collection about Mace Windu and I thought there needed to be more pairings in it.

They didn't see it coming. The troopers went to sleep one night in the barrack, a night like any other on Thyferra, hot, humid, unpleasant to human lungs, and they didn't feel the gas that was slowly invading room after room. The mist was tasteless, scentless, almost colourless. Soon, the whole base was full of its insidious presence.

Next morning every stormtrooper, every officer, every technicians still here to feel it woke up with a terrible hungover. There was a lot of swearing and throwing up as haggard men tumbled from their bunks in an effort to reach the fresher, or woke up on the floors of the hallways.

And the discovery of the thefts didn’t help. The hangar was empty of the aircrafts, the computers neatly sliced and the weapons stock stolen. Everything that could be taken apart and shipped off in a few hours had disappeared, including food, medication and even the Commander’s uniforms.

“The Moff will have my head,” the Commander had lamented and he immediately had started to search for someone to throw to the wolves instead.

For a moment he thought he had found it.

From the five hundred men of the garrison, eighty were missing. Had they done that? He couldn't be guilty if this was some spy work. And they were all the old model, to use the officer's favourite expression, clones instead of real men like him.

But the holosurveillance’s tapes proved him wrong.

Stormtroopers had come, or well, men armoured like stormtroopers, and dismantled and stolen everything...and when they had gone, they had taken the clones on stretcher.

With a sight, the officer marked them on the stolen goods list. 

******************************

The world was long to come back. For long, there was only fog and whispers. 

 

Boil saw Waxer. 

He tasted bacta, the thing coating his tongue.

He saw a body cloaked in brown, the face hidden to him. 

He heard a canon and there was only silence after, something falling from a high cliff.

He saw bodies, piles of bodies burning and the smell was so terrible that even the filters of his helmet weren't enough.

He saw blood, so much blood, rivers of it, and he was walking in it, and the level was rising so much he was at danger of drowning. 

 

Then he woke up, a yell to his lips, his heart in danger of exploding for how strong it was beating. 

"Vod, vod, everything is safe. You're safe, safe, vod," The voice was familiar, he couldn't place it, everything was too much, too bright, too noisy, too moving... He turned around and threw up. 

Someone was rubbing his back and he felt a glass pressed to his hand. 

"Here. Rinse, spit." 

He leaned down against a body. After a moment, his sight adjusted enough and he saw the face, the same as his.

"Waxer?" But no, the hair was wrong, and the scar around the eye, he knew that scar.

"Commander? Commander, what happened?"

Cody's expression was pained and in Boil's head, everything was blending in some sort of mess, nothing made sense. Had he shoot....he was sure he had shoot civilians!! 

"Oh Kriff, am I malfunctioning? Am I being decommissioned?"

"No, brother, you functioned exactly like you were supposed to. Drink the rest of the water. There is a shower with your name on it, and then I will explain everything."

*********************

Yavin 4's base was an organised mess. It was nothing like Boil remembered the GAR or the Empire's army. It was logical: secret rebellions have slightly more difficulties obtaining pieces for their ships!

He followed Cody from hangars to hallways, listening to his crash course about the Rebel Alliance. After years in the Empire's army, with almost only human males, it was strange to see so many races working together, all genders, all colours, all shapes, united in one common goal : to make the galaxy a better place in restoring democracy.

He saw brothers, here and here, some with fresh scars on the side of their heads, some with hairs already grown back.

He even recognized some who had been in his last posting in the Empire. It was quite a shock to realize he didn't know their names. All of them, he had meet in the Empire and there, only their numbers had had an importance. What had become of his batch brothers? Of the other brothers of Ghost Company?

“Commander...”

“Yes, you have many questions I suppose.”

They went to the mess and took two serving of some stews and two canteens of water, and went to eat outside, in the shadow of a tree, close enough from the base but far away enough for their conservation to not be overhead.

“I don't remember the last time I had real food,” Boil half-marvelled. The stew seemed the best thing in the world.

“I know, brother,” Cody answered, his smile tight.

The things the former Commander had to explain to him, Boil didn’t like them. He cried, he wasn’t ashamed of it. What other answer could there be to the revelation that you were never more than a tool fated to water with his blood the birth of a Sith Empire?

Cody let him cry all he could, an arm around Boil’s shoulder. He was just there, silent, the support his brother needed in that moment.

And then came the question.

The question every brother had asked, after waking up with his mind free in the Rebel Alliance’s base or ships. From the pilots to the foot soldiers, the cavalry, the demolition specialists…Every one of them, free of the chip, had asked the same question:

“How can I help?”

“There is no obligation,” Cody said, “The Alliance doesn’t force anyone. If you ask, they can offer you a small stipend to go your own way and search for a better life. In the Empire, you would be too much recognizable, of course, but a few brothers have left for the Unknown regions and can always be relied on, whether you want to stay with them or just make it a first stop.”

“How can I help?” Boil only insisted.

“…We have a special section.”

“We? The vode?”

“Not only.”

That’s when Boil saw them, disembarking from a shuttle, right in the axe of their tree.

A group of brothers, he would have recognized them everywhere, even if they weren’t wearing armours but the mismatch mix of uniform, personal choices and strange ideas that seemed to be the usual for the rebels.

In the middle of the group was a man in Mandalorian armour, helmet under his arm, towering over the brothers. The nature of the Mandalorian armour was evident. That man couldn’t go in mission with his face uncovered.

Because that man was the very-officially dead Mace Windu.

“What the kriff?” Boil said and Cody put a nastily sharp elbow in his ribs.

“Don’t talk like that about one of your commanding officers.”

“One of…”

“Meet the Starbird Corp. Well, a part of. We are more or less four thousand angry vode and something like twenty surviving Jedi. We give a hand to the Rebellion when we can, of course, but we have one speciality.”

“Which is?”

Cody smiled.

“Well, you, of course. And every brother still in the clutches of the Empire. We find them, rescue them and dechipp them.”

“And the Rebels just…just let you? Instead of working for them?”

“We aren’t slaves, vode. We are members of the Rebel Alliance and the vode still chipped in the Empire’s ranks are victims to be rescued.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. You should meet Senator Mon Mothma, once. She’s the one who insisted with the Alliance High Command for giving us free reign on our missions and a good chunk of the budget. And now, come, it’s time to meet the others.”

That night, Boil went to sleep in an individual room for the first time in his life. The quartermaster had given him everything he had asked for, colourful clothes and some perfumed shower gel, and every brother on base had insisted to add to his new possessions. A holobook. Chocolate. A nice razor. There was a wonderfully soft jacket that was apparently from Senator Organa, who wasn’t on base right now but had left standing orders and a provision of clothes as gifts for newly liberated clones.

There had been a small party, apparently the norm for every new brother freed.

“You have a previously undiscovered allergy to the sedative the medics use on the brothers during de-chipping,” Cody had explained, “We almost lost you and they kept you in artificial coma for a week to let your body time to heal. That’s why the others who were with you when you stole you woke up before you. We already had a party for them, but every occasion is good here.”

Boil had too many cups of some nice Bothan wine, meet many brothers, and also others Rebels, some who were in the habits to work with the Starbirds, some who had only saw the lights in the hangar used for the party and come for a drink. General Windu didn’t come, which Boil didn’t know what to think about, and he knew the reality would crash on him soon, but for now he was free and he wanted to savour it a little, before the rage about their fate settled in.

He even drunkenly made out with an equally drunk Devaronian cargo pilot, before Cody stopped them, grumbling that it was every time the same thing, that he was tired of playing the old duenna and that they could resume the next day if they still wanted.

That night, Boil dreamed of General Kenobi.

The Jedi was standing on the cliff where he had died. He wasn’t looking at Boil but at the small pool, so far away below, where his body had fallen.

Next to him, a brother Boil didn’t know was standing, his hand on General Kenobi’s shoulder. Kenobi was shaking, bruises on his face, and right on the heart, a blaster burn as big as the fist. At every breath, a little white from the bones could be seen.

The Jedi turned to Boil. His eyes were unseeing, as white as an old sentient with cataract.

“It’s important, Boil. You have to tell them.”

In the dream, it didn’t seem strange to speak to a dead man.

“Sir, I will,” Boil said, “what is the message?”

“You have to tell them, Boil. It’s so important.” Blood was pouring from his mouth with every breath and his tone was begging.

Boil woke up in cold sweat.

“What the fuck?”

************************************************************************************

Cody was yawning by the time he reached his quarters, the closest possible from the centre of command. The day had been busy, from a briefing first thing in the morning for Rex’s strike team, which had been followed by too much paperwork and an Intelligence briefing, to his usual row with Borsk Fey'lya, and the emotions of seeing Boil again and sharing with him the truth of what had happened…

No matters how many times he did it, it was never easy to reveal to a brother the depth of their slavery.

The chips, the Sith, Order 66, the years of mindless automaton slaughtering civilians, every brother had a breaking point, and every brother reached it, broke, yell, wept, all in Cody’s arms.

It had been eight years since the birth of the Empire, six years and a few months since Cody himself had been freed and taken his place as one of the members of the Alliance High Command, and it was never easier.

There was light in his quarters when the door opened. The man he shared them with was already there, engrossed in something in his holopad.

“You could have come to Boil’s party,” Cody remarked in entering, but the other didn’t answer.

Cody always did thing in the same order; first his shoes left next to the door, then he washed up his hands and his face, put his comm’ on ‘important communications only’ then and only then he felt more like a man, less like the de facto leader of the Starbirds troops.

“Mace?” He tried again, when he sat next to him and took a look at what had the other man fascinated. It was an intelligence report on the Wookies enslaving.

Cody sighed. There was keeping himself aware of the state of the Empire, and there was torturing himself with it. He took his blaster out and put it on the small table. He didn’t like when the weapon was too far away, even on base.

“I brought you back something to eat from Boil’s party. Where you should have come.”

That snapped Mace Windu out of his musing.

“I didn’t want…I wanted him to have time before being forced to see a Jedi. He already will have to work with me in the Starbird Corp-”

“Once again, no one of us feels forced to work with you,” Cody said, even if it was for the billionth time.

A shadow passed on Mace Windu’s face. The freedom the Rebel Alliance offered to the clones was for him a proof that the Jedi had failed themselves, when faced with the same question. The Korrun bore that guilt, and many others, like an anchor around his neck; dragging him to the bottom, no matters how many hours of meditation, and no matters what Cody and the other said.

One of the other Jedi surviving had once tried to explain something to Cody about Mace’s dark thoughts, about shatterpoints and the Force’s tainted state, and how it felt, but there were so many philosophical reference that they had lost Cody early in the explanation.

“Eat,” Cody insisted, pushing in his direction the box he had bought back. It seemed his fate would forever include taking care of stubborn Jedi who thought, like the big idiots they could be, that they transcended the need of the body.

Mace turned his head, as if caught by a rightful reproach. He always knew when Cody thought about Obi-Wan.

Another guilt to add to the string of them, as if he had taken something from the dead Jedi, when working together had brought Cody and him closer, three years before.

Cody pinched his lips.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” he announced and fled to the bathroom.

Under the warm water, he calmed. Yes, Mace had issues. It wasn’t exactly surprising, with him being the only surviving Jedi Master of an Order slaughtered to the last Younglings. Cody had a whole mess of issues himself, despite the help offered by the medics of the Rebel Alliance, and Obi-Wan was also one of them, if for vastly different reasons from Mace. And sometimes, their issues collided.

When he left the bathroom, it was with the special medical kit of Mace, as a peace offering.

Mace had eaten everything obediently and was preparing the infusion of berries they liked to drink in the evening. It had interesting medical properties and helped with the pain of old wounds, something both of them desperately needed. He smiled to Cody, nothing more than a quick shadow of a smile, but he wasn’t a man of big, extravagant moments.

Cody helped him with the prosthesis, unfastening one of them from his forearm, letting visible the stump and the neural electrodes in it. When Mace Windu had fallen from Palpatine’s office window, his two hands had been cut by Skywalker’s lightsaber and in those first times of the Empire, in the panic and the disorganisation of the few people who didn’t believe in Palpatine’s tales, Mace had received the proper care neither for those wounds, nor for those caused by the fall, or the electrocution which had happened just before.

Consequently, his body had rejected the first prosthesis so violently his immune system had staged a revolt against the neural implant, and the Rebel Alliance had almost lost what had been at the time their only Jedi. Rex, the only free brother at the time, and already a rebel, had recounted to Cody the efforts of the medics and the way all the members of the burgeoning Rebel Alliance had gravitated to the infirmary and the bacta tube. Like there was a correlation between the survival of Master Windu and the survival of their growing rebellion.

If Mace had received proper care fast enough, he could have worn prosthesis which would have been almost as good as his lost hands, like Skywalker, damn him, had worn. Now, he had to take them down regularly and to care for the stumps with great meticulousness to stop infection. Before they became closer, Mace had done it himself, but his prosthesis didn’t have the fine motor controls of a hand and it was easier when Cody helped.

It would be quicker if Cody could do the two at the same time, but neither of them was comfortable with the idea of Mace without a hand, even for a moment, even on Yavin 4.

Cody cleaned up the stump, coated it in bacta cream, then they read together one of the Starbird squad mission review. One hour after, Cody washed away what was left of the cream and helped Mace put on his prosthesis again, then they did the other one. That one, they let free for the night, with only a light bandage. It was better for the stump.

Mace didn’t meditate that night, which was rare. And when the lights were out, Cody felt his body plaster itself against him closer than Yavin 4’s climate made them in the habits to.

“I will go and welcome Boil tomorrow,” Mace said in the dark.

“You know it’s not obligatory. You’re no more chained to our team than any newly freed brother is.”

“I know. But it is important work. Whatever time I have left, helping you free your brothers is a good use of it.”

“I know that Bothan went to you again-“ Cody said, because he knew how some members of High Command still thought using so much people and money for the clones was a waste of time, and said Bothan was the worst of them.

“Fey'lya prides himself so much in seeing what he believes is the big picture that he can forget the most important. All the galaxy is enslaved right now, but your brothers don’t even have their own mind and are doubly prisoners of the Sith.”

Mace kissed Cody behind the ear.

“I choose the vode. And I will never regret it,” He said, his voice vibrant.

Cody turned to him and kissed him, hard. Sleep suddenly seemed uninteresting.

Yes, they had issues.

So, so many issues.

Nevertheless, happiness could be found even after the darkest hour. He had lost the first Jedi he had loved and Mace had lost the first man he had broken the Code for. They could be killed almost every day.

They were still happy.

Sometimes, it could be a little hesitating. But it was good.

He had loved and killed Obi-Wan and the time he had shared with Mace was now thrice longer that the year he had had with Obi-Wan.

Mace had loved and lost Ponds, and had been with Ponds’s brother for a time that was almost five times longer than the one he had shared with Ponds.

Cody rolled them over, pining Mace under him, then he attacked his lover’s light tunic, pressing feverish kisses against the skin of Mace’s throat. He groped blindly for the light on the bedside table. He wanted to see him. He wanted to see Mace and for Mace to see him, to know who he was with.

“I see you,” Mace said, “I see you, Cody,” and he drew him closer into his arms.

***************************************

Life wasn’t exactly easy in the Starbird Corp, Boil discovered. Hard work, long hours, frustrating results.

But it was good, so good. There was something powerful in waking up in the mornings knowing it was to make the galaxy a better place. 

He was working with brothers again, true brothers, free brothers, not the mindless automatons of the last year, and the Rebels themselves were good people. They threw medical help at him until he accepted to speak to someone about his years in the Empire, and didn’t even frown when he choose to deal with the trauma in sleeping with half the cargo pilots contingents, Devanorian from the first night included.

Then he settled down on Yavin 4, mission after mission. He worked with Cody, with Rex, with Gregor, with Wolffe. With Mace Windu, even if he didn’t exactly like it: the man tried so hard to protect the clones that he put himself in stupid danger for it, which in turn very much complicated the brothers’ mission.

Boil even saved Senator Mon Mothma’s life once and if the adrenaline gave them some probably bad ideas, in the time needed by the rest of the Alliance to find them, nobody had to know. And if sometimes they had another go at it, they were both adults and it concerned nobody else.

It would have been as good as he could wish for without Kenobi’s kriffin ghost.

Every night, his former General haunted Boil’s dreams. Night after night, he looked less like the corpse they had left on Umbara after Order 66 and more like their beloved General, but it was still a nightmare.

Every morning, Boil woke up with the same sense of urgency, of an important duty, but never, in all this nightmares, Kenobi told him anything more useful than “You have to tell them”. Boil talked about it, again and again, with his therapist. Guilt about the Jedi’s slaughter wasn’t probably a new one for the Rebel Alliance’s medics, who were in the habits to work with the vode, but at some facial tics on the Rhodian’s face, Boil was sure the woman was surprised about the specifics of the form it took with him.

“You have to help me,” Boil pleaded to Kenobi, dream after dream, “you have to give me the message!”

“You have to tell them”, Kenobi repeated, eyes begging. He looked healthy and healed by now. At his side, that brother Boil didn’t know had the same expression.

He taken to roam the base, late in the night, trying to recover from the nightmares. He often ran into Mace Windu, but they ignored each other and went their way, busy with their own guilt and bad dreams. The Jedi didn’t really frequent anyone but Cody, from what Boil had seen. Not even the other Rebels Jedi, led conjointly by Quinlan Vos and T'ra Saa. Windu had even left to T'ra Saa his place on the High Command, when she had joined the Alliance after having tracked down and killed Vader.

In missions, Mace Windu was the most efficient agent the Starbird Corp could dream of, and perhaps also the most death-wishing idiot Jedi who ever was. Outside, he retreated in his shell.

“You have to tell them,” Obi-Wan Kenobi pleaded, again and again, and Boil would have given a hand for that to stop. One night, Boil changed his method.

He turned to the unknown brother, who still had his hand on Kenobi’s shoulder in a show of support.

“What’s your name, vode?” Boil tried, and to his intense surprise, he received an answer.

Ponds.

Ten minutes after, he entered this name into the Alliance’s computers. The free vode had begun to detail in the mainframe a list of all brothers, dead and alive, using files sliced of Kamino. It would serve in their search for other brothers to rescue, but also as a way to remember all the brothers it was too late for.

If Ponds was a delirious creation of his mind, he would go to the medics to be declared unfit, because he would be a risk in mission.

But the computer spit up a result.

Kriff.

Commander Ponds, of Lightning Squadron. Served on Simocadia, Juma 9, Behpour, Malastare. Died on Year 14 after the Great ReSynchronization. In cause of death, instead of the reference of the battle, the person who had entered Ponds into the computer had put down: murdered.

Kriff.

 _Lightning Squadron_. He knew about them. They were part of of the 91st Reconnaissance Corps. They were _Mace Windu’s troops_.

What the kriff?

It was so early it could still be considered night. Boil was in his pyjamas, the bluest and silkiest thing he had found in the quartermaster’s stock, with only his boots and his jacket.

He still went to drum on Cody and Windu’s door. But as he considered himself smart, he made a detour to the mess for three cups of caff.

“The base better be burning,” Cody said when he opened the door and found him.

Boil offered one of the cups as a peace offering to his glaring brother.

“I need to tell you something, like, right now,” He said to him and Cody let him pass. The quarters were slightly bigger than Boil’s own, but not so much for two people and from the door on the other wall, he could see a bed still unmade, before Mace Windu stepped through the door of the bedroom and it closed. Apparently, he slept with a tunic more open that what he wore in daylight, letting Boil see the nice, purple bite on the side of the collarbone, and it broke Boil’s mind, until Cody nudged him from his elbow.

“The important thing you woke us up for?”

“Oh yes. Hem, I think I’m haunted by our former General and by Master Windu former Commander,” Boil answered, and because he hadn’t know a good night of sleep since his arrival here and was pretty sure it was in fact, partly the fault of Cody and Windu, he timed it just when his brother took a large sip of the caff.

“What the kriff?” Cody spluttered, caff flying everywhere.

They made him meditate.

Of course they did.

Boil sat down all night on the highest degree of the Yavin 4’s pyramid, Mace Windu exactly in the same position facing him, Cody next to Boil and nudging him every time Boil fall asleep.

It wasn’t probably the first meditation session for Cody, Boil remarked in petto. His position seemed as flawless as Master Windu. Probably a consequence of having a thing for Jedi.

The gigantic Yavin ran its course across the sky and Boil’s ass hurt from sitting on the stone for so long, and he was hungry, thirsty and sleepy and suddenly, he realized he couldn’t hear anymore the night’s noises, from the wind in the foliage, to the base noises.

He opened his eyes. Across the platform, he could see two transparent silhouettes, one brighter than other. Ponds was filtering in and out of view, except for his hand in General Kenobi’s hand. It was like the clone was draining the mean to appear from that point of contact. Heart in his throat, Boil stood up, hearing the other two do the same at his side. Cody made a noise that could have been a sob, and that Boil immediately swore to himself he would forget.

General Kenobi had a smile. He looked younger than Boil had ever saw him.

“I thought I would never succeed to reach you,” he said, “I have been yelling in the void so long.”

“Obi-Wan,” Cody said, his voice wet and Boil wished so hard he wasn’t there, because it was too intimate for witnesses.

“I’m so proud of you,” Obi-Wan continued, and his free hand passed across Cody’s cheek, “I’m so proud of you and I forgive you. You were _never_ guilty, Cody, but if you need to hear it, know that I forgive you. For my death, and for continuing to live.”

“Ponds, oh Ponds,” Mace murmured and for Boil it was even worse than Cody, to hear the Jedi like that.

The dead Commander had a gest, like to touch Mace Windu’s prosthesis.

“Your poor hands,” he said, “and your poor heart. Mace, I’m so happy my brother is there to take care of you.”

“It wasn’t… I didn’t search to replace you…” Mace Windu insisted, and Ponds smiled.

“I know, love, I know. And I’m happy you found each other,” he said, flittering out of view.

“You need to live,” Obi-Wan said, and he was becoming more transparent every second,“ and you need to continue the good work you’re doing. The Starbird Corp are already wrapping the time line into a better one. But there is important mission, for them and the Alliance, a mission that will quicken the end of the Empire.”

“Genosis,” Ponds continued, and only his voice reached them now “the Alliance needs to send spies to Genosis. What is being prepared there would give the Emperor the reach to do such harm….”

“We’ll go,” Cody swore, “We’ll go. Don’t leave –“

“We never really will,” Obi-Wan answered, “We’ll be with you, always. Now live, my love, my friend. Live, the two of you, and we’ll see each other in the Force.”

And at that point, Boil woke up, on his side on the stone, trembling like he was crashing from stims poisoning and crying like he hadn’t since Waxer’s death. Mace Windu and Cody were even worse. Supporting each other, they hobbled to the mess.

“Caff, and perhaps alcohol, and send a message to High Command. Meeting at the first hour” Cody said to the first brother who saw them and they collapsed on a nearby table.

“Kriff,” Boil said, “my head feels like an X-Wing crashed on it. Why couldn’t they find someone else to play ghostly-radio?”

“An excellent question,” Mace Windu answered and he pinned Boil’s under his gaze. Boil gulped. It was like trying to stay calm under a predator’s gaze. He had never remarked how the dark eyes could become cold and piercing.

Suddenly, the tension abated and Windu looked less like a warrior ready to strike and more like an exhausted man, in need of a good meal and a twenty hours nap.

“Kriff,” he said and Cody did a double take at the word.

“I owe you two apologies, Boil,” Windu said.

“Eh, sir, not really-“

“Obi-Wan didn’t succeed in contacting me because I wasn’t listening. I was too busy feeling guilty about my relationship with your brother, thinking I had either stolen something from my dead friend-“

“Not a thing to be stolen, thank you very much,” Cody remarked.

“- or either that I was replacing Ponds by his brother and that it was really uncouth. And the second apology is more about the how Obi-Wan succeed in contacting you.”

“I’m one of his former men?”

“Yes, you are, and it probably helped, but it isn’t the most important reason. I suppose it has always been in you but the chip erased it. Still, I should have feel it the second you woke up here, your brain free. Only my refusal to really connect with you and your brothers, the guilt I feel about your fate, stopped me from feeling it. I saw you were a gigantic shatterpoint, of course, but I thought you would soon be on a very vital mission for the Alliance.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Boil, you’re Force Sensitive. Have you ever thought about Jedi training?”

And around them, the base slowly woke up, as they talked and set in motion what would one day be the end of the Empire.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr, under the same username, come and say hi!


End file.
